


Atonement

by autumnsnows



Series: Dark Knight Week 2020 [1]
Category: Final Fantasy XIV
Genre: Angst, Blood and Injury, Other, Self-Harm
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-09
Updated: 2020-11-09
Packaged: 2021-03-09 00:53:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,007
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27462244
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/autumnsnows/pseuds/autumnsnows
Summary: The line between atonement and self-flagellation is thin and blurred.Will you continue your atonement of imagined sins?Or will you seek salvation?
Relationships: Fray Myste/Warrior of Light
Series: Dark Knight Week 2020 [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2006458
Kudos: 7





	Atonement

**Author's Note:**

> Part of Dark Knight Week 2020 - Day 1 - sin/salvation.  
> There's character lore surrounding this that help color in the circumstances of this short story, but it's not really needed in this case. 
> 
> CW for self-harm borne out of recklessness and disregard and blood.

Taking a knife, Autumn jabbed at the cast that encased her left hand up to her forearm. She didn’t even bother trying to be precise with her strikes - haphazard stabs and slices, some piercing, others bouncing off the cast.  
She didn’t care. She kept stabbing.   
Some struck the soft skin beneath, and she could feel the trickles of blood pooling inside the cramped tomb her hand remained sealed inside.  
She didn’t care. She kept stabbing.  
The chirurgeons had advised her to keep the cast on for a summer. Let the broken bones in her hand heal. The damage was gruesome even by magical standards - while they had successfully reset the bones in such a way that it approximated the look of a hand, more traditional methods of healing would be necessary to complete the process.  
It had only been about half a summer.  
She didn’t care. She kept stabbing.  
“Why not just cut it off, if its presence bothers you so?”  
Autumn looked up. Nobody else in the dim apartment. She kept stabbing.  
“That’s your way, isn’t it? Self-punishment for your slightest transgressions. An eye for a stray eyelash.”  
Autumn stabbed harder. Blood began to seep and drip onto the floor.  
“Is this what you think you deserve for a moment of weakness? A brief lapse of judgement, brought on by your compulsive need to impress people who don’t give a shit about you.”  
“Shut up,” Autumn muttered. She kept stabbing.  
“Did you expect the Maelstrom would give you some sort of award for your recklessness? A fresh private they put on the frontlines out of necessity, not out of confidence. A senseless display of bravado.”  
The stabbing stopped.  
“I do fine by myself,” Autumn muttered. Setting the knife down, she began to dig into the cast, wincing as she struggled prying it apart. Broken shards of the cast dug into the fingertips of her good hand, adding to the slow drip of blood that now formed a pool on the floor.  
“You think you do. You confused compulsion for competence.”  
“It was bad intel. That’s all.” Autumn’s hands began to pull at the cast more roughly, her raw strength only just enough to cause it to pull apart at the many seams she had created.  
“Styrmleita isn’t here. The only person who you have to let down is yourself.”  
Autumn picked up the knife and threw it at nothing. It lodged itself into the wall.  
“Does this feel good? This self-flagellation?”  
“Yes. Never felt better,” Autumn said, sarcasm and bitterness sewn throughout her words.  
“Why do you lie to me?”  
“Because you won’t shut up no matter what I say, so I might as well piss you off as much as possible.” Breathing heavily, Autumn yelled as she forced the cast apart, the bloodied splinters falling to the floor in an explosion of dust.  
“What does that accomplish?”  
“Nothing. But it makes me feel better.” Autumn experimented with flexing her fingers. Shocks of pain soared up her arm at even the slightest suggestion of articulation.  
“Does it, though?”  
Autumn turned to her right, where a woman clothed in shadow and ichor sat next to her.  
“I fucked up. I pay the consequences. The punishment will always fit the crime.”  
“The crime of what? Bravado?” The woman leaned back, her yellow eyes regarding Autumn curiously.  
Autumn reached down and ripped her overshirt open, creating haggard strips that she wrapped around her still bleeding left hand.  
“Crime implies a material act. Mine is an act against the Twelve.”  
The shadowy woman continued regarding Autumn, her eyes unblinking. Any facial expression she might have been making was obscured in darkness. “Did the Twelve tell you this? Did Rhalgr come and stab your broken hand as punishment? Or did you decide how the gods adjudicate transgressions yourself? I never took you for a religious woman.”  
“Gods, you’re fucking annoying,” Autumn said. She threw herself back into wrapping her broken hand with renewed fervor and recklessness, grunting and wincing as dirty fabric touched open wounds, its dirt mixing into the freshly opened self-inflicted wounds.  
“I need to be,” the shadow said, reaching out, she set her hand on Autumn’s wrist. Autumn batted it away. The woman, seeming to have expected this, simply withdrew her hand. “It’s the only way I can convince you to take care of yourself.”  
“Well, you’re doing a really fucking fine job of it,” Autumn growled, brandishing her broken hand in front of the shadow’s face. “Truly, a profoundly positive influence on my life.”  
The shadowy woman’s voice remained even, unmoved. “You’d be dead in a fucking ditch if it weren’t for me. I’d say I’m doing remarkably well, given who I’m working with.” Autumn growled again. The woman ignored it.  
“You made a mistake. And then another, and then another.” The woman looked down at Autumn’s bloodied hand. Autumn pulled it away, as if suddenly embarrassed. “In trying to atone for your imagined sins, you commit very real sins against your very being. I ask again...what does that accomplish?”  
“....Nothing,” Autumn said quietly. The words that had followed in her previous assertion remained absent.  
“Nothing. It accomplishes nothing.” The woman reached out and placed her hand on Autumn’s thigh. Autumn let it linger.  
“Now. Will you continue to atone for imagined sins? Or will you actually seek salvation?”  
Autumn didn’t say a word.  
“I didn’t expect an answer. I don’t expect an answer for some time. But whenever you’re ready, I’ll be here.” The shadowy hand squeezed Autumn’s thigh gently. “You need only but ask.”  
Autumn, who had been looking down at the shadowy hand, slowly looked up and turned her head toward the shadowy woman, only to find she had already gone, the gentle hand on her thigh but a faint memory.  
Autumn looked down at her hand, bloodied and haphazardly bandaged. She looked up at the ceiling and sighed. Grabbing her jacket with her good hand, she threw it across her shoulders and went outside, making her way toward the local chirurgeon's quarters.


End file.
